


Strange Aeons

by Shiny_n_new



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Alternate Universe - Lovecraft, Dark, Descriptions of gore, Instanity, M/M, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-04
Updated: 2012-03-04
Packaged: 2017-11-01 03:54:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,065
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/351678
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shiny_n_new/pseuds/Shiny_n_new
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Have you ever heard of an Outer God?” John asked pleasantly.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Strange Aeons

Sherlock wanted to close his eyes. It was a stupid, instinct and nothing more, but he wanted it all the same. His body knew a bright light was coming and wanted to protect his eyes. His body, of course, didn’t realize that the odds of Sherlock having functioning eyes or even a functioning body after the explosion would be virtually nil. This was the-  
  
“Okay, enough of that,” John said, voice vaguely irritated but otherwise calm. He rose to his feet, hands tucked into the pockets of his jeans.  
  
Sherlock darted his eyes to John, confused, trying to understand what his plan was. It would be strange for John to have thought of an angle that Sherlock hadn’t, but Sherlock had learned not to underestimate his flatmate.  
  
In front of him, Moriarty was still grinning that smug, mad grin. “Oh? Oh, I didn’t realize! Okay, boys, pack up. Sherlock’s lapdog says we’re done.”  
  
The laser sights of the sniper rifles didn’t waver. They still lit up John’s chest, and Sherlock could see them dancing across his own out of the corner of his eye. Sherlock glanced at John again. Maybe John was trying to buy Sherlock time to think of a way out of this? That was very sweet of him, and very flattering, because Sherlock had turned the situation over in his mind and shaken it to try and make a solution fall out, but he couldn’t find one. There were at least three snipers on John, another three on himself. He couldn’t see any of the snipers, and even if he could have it was highly unlikely he could kill them all before one managed to shoot him or John.  
  
“You know, Jim, I was going to make this painless for you,” John said, his expression oddly close to ‘disappointed’. He walked forward, standing next to Sherlock, and tugged on the taller man’s sleeve to steer the hand holding the gun away from the bomb.  
  
“John!” Sherlock hissed.  
  
“Hush,” John said, sending Sherlock a fond look.  
  
Sherlock boggled. Had John just _shushed_ him?  
  
“Painless?” Moriarty said, giving a mocking, surprised look. “That’s so sweet of you, Johnny!”  
  
“It was, actually,” John said. “Especially since you’ve been such an absolute bastard. Killing your fellow humans as a game.” John tsked, shaking his head. “Life should be a sacred thing to something as small as you. But I was still going to be nice. It would have been just like falling asleep.”  
  
Moriarty stared at John for a moment, and then he laughed. It was a strange, high-pitched sound, bouncing off the tile. It stopped just as abruptly as it started, the sound still echoing even as he bared his teeth at them. He leaned forward and stage-whispered to Sherlock, “I think the stress is too much for your sweetheart, Holmes. He’s cracked, and I know cracked.”  
  
John just smiled. The laser sights playing across Sherlock’s chest jerked sharply and then disappeared entirely, like the snipers had all dropped their guns. The amusement slid off Moriarty’s face and he narrowed his eyes. Sherlock risked a glance over his shoulder and saw that the laser sights on John were similarly missing.  
  
“Now that’s an interesting trick,” Moriarty said, tilting his head in a slow, predatory way. He was focused on John now, Sherlock having been relegated to a smaller corner of his mind. Sherlock would have been offended had he not been busy thinking the same thoughts as Moriarty, trying to understand what had happened. “Come on, Johnny-boy, share with the class.”  
  
“Have you ever heard of an Outer God?” John asked pleasantly.  
  
John looked so calm it was eerie, like they were all meeting for tea to talk about…God, Sherlock didn’t even know. Something stupid and inconsequential that normal people chattered about. Moriarty was staring at John with slitted eyes, mind clearly whirling as he tried to figure out what was happening. Sherlock realized with a start that this was probably what he looked like to Scotland Yard when he was examining a crime scene, like he was caught between what was in front of him and something only he could see.  
  
“The spooky tentacle monsters that H.P. Lovecraft came up with?” Moriarty sneered. “Let me guess: you’re working for one and something _bad_ will happen to me if I don’t let you go?” He wiggled his fingers on the word ‘bad’ and giggled. “Try again, dear. I’m not scared of ghost stories.”  
  
“Working for one?” John laughed, bright and cheerful. “Not quite. Sherlock, close your eyes.”  
  
Sherlock didn’t, of course. He would regret that.  
  
The space around John _folded_. Like origami paper, like light refracting through a crystal, except it was the fabric of space itself that was warping. Sherlock could feel it, like an earthquake rumbling through reality. Looking at the distortion made him dizzy, made his eyes water, but he kept looking because John was a small figure in the center of it all and Sherlock was terrified for him.  
  
And then, suddenly, the distortion changed and John was no longer a tiny human at the epicenter.  
  
Where John had once stood, there was now…something. And there weren’t words to describe it, and Sherlock’s mind shut down as he stared up at it, like a computer whose circuits were utterly fried-  
  
 _-a million miles of skin and muscle and bone stretched out, constantly shifting and reforming. Tearing rips into itself and mending the rips in the same heartbeat and Sherlock can see it all, right down to the cells and some of the cells are animal and others are plant and others are he-doesn’t-know-what but they look like cells if he squints and oh God-  
  
-when it moves (it just _existing _) Sherlock can feel it in every inch of him, like a drumskin when it’s hit with a mallet. His bones and skin and muscles and fat and cells and DNA all surge forward, trying to be closer to the Thing That Isn’t John. The neurons in his brain, the electrical sparks of his thoughts, all of them want to beclosebeonebeapartofit even as Sherlock’s soul, his consciousness, all the things he doesn’t give much thought or care towards, all of those are reeling back and screaming and oh God-_  
  
-this can’t be happening this can’t be happening this can’t be happening-  
  
 _-he hears Moriarty screaming, the sound not like anything he’s ever heard before. It barely sounds human, barely sounds like anything sentient at all, just mindless terror and Sherlock thinks that he and Moriarty have never been more alike than they are in this moment because Sherlock is screaming too and oh God-  
  
-he is going crazy, he can feel it, his mind cannibalizing itself as it tries to make sense of this Thing that there is no making sense of and the longer he stares the worse it becomes. Everything about It is _wrong _, its shape and its movements and the space around it all cracked and warped at terrible angles. His sanity is like the waves breaking along rocks, throwing itself up against an immovable object and losing and he never even had a chance and oh God-_  
  
 _-Moriarty is screaming louder now and Sherlock can’t see what the Thing That Isn’t John is doing because the view is blocked by a massive wall of torn purple muscle and mending white bone and vast swathes of mitochondria like a flock of birds blotting out the sun. Sherlock claws at his face, his eyes, warm rivers of blood down his hands as he tries to make the sight go away but it never will. It never will, even when he manages to tear out his right eye and put his thumb through his left because he can still hear Moriarty screaming and the image in his mind is too vivid and oh God-_  
  
-no no no no no no no no no no no-  
  
 _-and the screaming stops just as abruptly as the nightmare started and the Thing That Isn’t John turns even though it’s too big to move, bigger than all of London, but it’s turning anyway and Sherlock sees it in his mind even though his eyes are gone, he will never not see it, one wide black pupil staring down at him and he swears he can see stars inside of it and oh God-  
  
-it’s reaching towards him reaching into him he can feel it in the sparks of his thoughts and the twists of his DNA and then there is John’s voice “Shhh, Sherlock, shhh, it’s all right”- _  
  
And then the world snapped sharply back into focus. Sherlock was lying in a heap on the tile next to the pool, curled into a fetal position and soaked with poolwater. His face was covered in trails of snot and tears, and he was crying. Sobbing, really, like he hadn’t since he was a child. John knelt over him, hand resting against Sherlock’s forehead like he was trying to see if he had a fever. Sweet, reliable John in his plaid shirt, the lines of his face and the blue of his eyes as familiar as ever.  
  
There was no sign of Moriarty at all. Not a blood spatter, not an errant shoe, nothing. He was gone like he’d never existed.  
  
“What?” was all Sherlock could gasp out, staring up at John through the tears that he couldn’t quite stop.  
  
“I put your mind back in order,” John said, petting Sherlock’s hair gently, like he was trying to calm him down. “And your eyes. I told you not to look, you idiot.”  
  
“What the hell is an Outer God?” Sherlock asked, his throat feeling as raw as his nerves.  
  
“Not a Lovecraft fan?” John asked, sitting down next to Sherlock.  
  
Sherlock just stared.  
  
“Right, you don’t even bother to learn the solar system.”  
  
Sherlock stared harder.  
  
“Probably for the best, anyway,” John said, running a hand through his hair. “Dunno who thought it’d be funny to send him those dreams, but there was a lot of it he got wrong. Actually, it was probably Nyarlathotep that sent them, the smarmy git.”  
  
“John,” Sherlock murmured, sounding upsettingly desperate to his own ears. He couldn’t bear to sit here and watch John act normal. Not after _that_.  
  
John seemed to understand. Or maybe he was still in Sherlock’s mind. Either way, he sighed and said, “We’re forces of the universe, the power that goes through everywhere and everything. Time, fertility, gravity, things like that.”  
  
“And you’re…” Whatever John had done had blotted out the worst, most mind-shattering effects of his appearance, but Sherlock remembered some of it. Enough of it. Muscle tearing and re-knitting, cells separating, bone cracking and coming back together. That, combined with John’s previous words about life being sacred, plus his medical affiliations, meant- “You’re the god of Healing? Regeneration?”  
  
John’s smile was the brightest thing in the room for a moment. “You really are amazing, Sherlock. Just incredible.”  
  
Sherlock didn’t feel the usual warm glow that accompanied John’s compliments. He managed to push himself into a sitting position, muscles feeling distressingly weak. The product of coming down from an adrenaline rush, combined with the psychosomatic symptoms of temporarily losing his mind, most likely.  
  
“Are you all right?” John asked, worried. “I fixed up everything that felt injured, you’re actually probably in better shape than you were when you walked in here, but-”  
  
“Why are you here?” Sherlock asked, staring at John. There was a tremble to his voice, and Sherlock realized he was afraid. Afraid of _John_. Afraid of what he really was underneath the jumpers and the warm smiles and the kind words. Sherlock hated being afraid.  
  
John looked sad, like Sherlock’s fear was painful to him, and Sherlock felt guilty and angry and terrified all at once. “Sherlock, listen-”  
  
 _“Why are you here?!”_ Sherlock shouted, shoving at John, almost wanting to provoke him back into his monstrous form. “I’m human and I can barely stand to be around other people, what could this planet possibly hold for you?!”  
  
“I’m in everything, Sherlock,” John said calmly, his expression a mix of fondness and pity. “Every cell of every creature in the universe, from the bacteria all the way to the other gods. Anything living has to regenerate, and I’m right there with it. And I like to be a part of it, sometimes.”  
  
“Walk amongst the sheep,” Sherlock said, jaw tightening. This body, this personality, it was just a shell surrounding what John really was, and the disguise was perfect. Flawless. It had fooled everyone. _Everyone_.  
  
“No!” John said, shaking his head. “I’m not like a lot of the others, Sherlock. I care. I wasn’t being sarcastic when I said life was important. I’m a part of all of it, and sometimes I just want to…to be down in it, instead of just watching. You understand? I get bored.”  
  
And he did, he really did, and a part of Sherlock wanted to reach out to John, to hear about this whole new universe that he’d never even imagined before. He’d never be bored again if he did, neither of them would.  
  
But another part of Sherlock, one made of animal instinct and cold logic, was shuddering and recoiling. Sherlock knew that he’d never be the same after this night. He’d wear the mental scars from it for the rest of his life, flinching at shadows and shuddering at the sight of DNA or blood, or maybe even people. Maybe even his own injuries, because injuries meant John was working through him. John who was miles wide and tall and who had broken Sherlock’s mind completely that just the shadow of the memory made him feel shaky.  
  
John, who had lied to him. John, who was so powerful and vast that just thinking about it made Sherlock’s mind start to fray a little.  
  
His hands, seemingly without his permission, fisted themselves in the fabric of John’s jacket. “ _Please_ ,” he said, his voice cracking and desperate. He had no idea what he was begging for. He just knew that he was begging. He couldn’t go on this way for the rest of his life. He couldn’t pretend like everything was all right.  
  
“You were never supposed to find out,” John said, resting his hands over Sherlock’s, his thumb stroking across his knuckles. He was wearing that wonderful, terrible expression that he got when he was really and truly worried about Sherlock. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. I’ll fix this, all right? You won’t remember a thing.”  
  
John leaned forward, and the part of Sherlock’s mind that was usually the loudest was screaming about losing valuable knowledge, about letting someone take it from him. But the rest of him leaned forward, desperate and terrified and wanting it all to go away. He felt John’s lips touch his forehead, and then everything went black.  
  
***  
  
“John, bring me my phone,” Sherlock ordered, typing away busily on his laptop. Three weeks had passed since the pool, since he and John had been pulled unconscious out of the rubble and mud of the destroyed building. Three weeks since Moriarty had disappeared without a trace.  
  
“It’s on the table next to you,” John called out from the kitchen.  
  
“I know that.”  
  
John heaved a long-suffering sigh and walked over, mugs of tea in both hands. He handed one to Sherlock, followed by the phone. He settled in next to Sherlock on the couch, blowing on his still-steaming tea.  
  
“I wonder, if there was another consulting detective out there in the world, would he or she be as lazy as you?” John mused, taking a sip. Sherlock just smiled, hearing the fondness in John’s tone.  
  
He finally stopped typing in order to send a quick text to Lestrade, and then he was back to work. John craned his neck to stare at the screen and asked, “What’re you doing?”  
  
“Searching for the rest of Moriarty’s criminal network,” Sherlock said, taking a sip of his own tea. “You know that.”  
  
John sighed again. “Sherlock, not that it isn’t nice to see you using your powers for good instead of evil, but…”  
  
“But what?” Sherlock asked, carefully not looking at John. They’d been skirting around this discussion for days now.  
  
“You’re not going to find him, Sherlock,” John said, sliding his hand into Sherlock’s and tugging it away from the keyboard. “Moriarty’s dead.”  
  
“You can’t know that,” Sherlock said, turning to look at John. “We survived. He’s out there.”  
  
“He isn’t,” John insisted. His movements were a little hesitant as he reached up to cup Sherlock’s face. He still wasn’t quite used to being allowed to touch; they’d finally come together after the pool and it was all too new to be a sure thing. “I just have this feeling. He’s gone.”  
  
Sherlock gave John a withering look even as he leaned against his hand. “You’ll excuse me if I don’t trust your pathetic deduction skills.”  
  
John laughed, but Sherlock could see the worry written across his face. Sherlock squeezed John’s hand and was silent for a moment, trying to find the right words. That was bizarre in and of itself, not having the right words for something. But Sherlock had come to accept that too much about this entire situation was atypical. They couldn’t possibly have survived the bomb blast, and yet here they were. Even Mycroft was baffled.  
  
“You talk about having a feeling that he’s gone,” Sherlock said finally. It was hard to look John in the eye while he was talking about something as irrational as the fear that had buried itself inside of him, even though John was just as irrational as everyone else.  
  
“Well, I can feel him out there. I look out the window and I feel like there’s a…a darkness, lurking just out of sight. Something huge and terrible and-” Sherlock shook his head, frustrated. “What else could it be but him? These feelings of fear are a reaction to the things he nearly did to us. And so when I bring down Moriarty and his little spiderweb of criminals, I’ll sleep better. I’ll _feel_ better.” Sherlock turned away from John abruptly and continued typing, his hands shaking in a way he would refuse to ever acknowledge. “I’ll be normal again.”  
  
John’s voice sounded almost regretful when he answered, “I hope so."

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [this ](http://sherlockbbc-fic.livejournal.com/10038.html?thread=51509302#t51509302)prompt at the [Sherlock Kink Meme.](http://sherlockbbc-fic.livejournal.com)
> 
> Fun fact, I'd envisioned ending this with Sherlock being amazed and fascinated by John, but in the end, Lovecraftian horror won out. Human beings were not meant to look upon the creatures that crawl between the stars and all that.


End file.
